


Desire

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Choking, First Time, General Hux Is Not A Nice Person, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren The Awkward Virgin, M/M, Massage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:33:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6164126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ren wants to ask Hux a question. Hux is in the middle of his weekly massage in the officer's medbay.</p>
<p>Things can only go downhill from here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desire

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not very good at this game. I told myself I was going to stop writing, but...this happened, and I figured if I'd written it, I might as well publish it. Goddammit. I also freely blame [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqOg-oFYh4o) because well, Eighties electronica. It's to be blamed for a lot of mistakes in this world, I suspect.

The general was not a difficult person to locate. Still Ren could not find him. It had been nothing important in the beginning, but now it had become an itch, inflamed and furious; the irritation writhed under his skin, diseased and demanding. Kylo Ren could not stand to be ignored. Somewhere, a memory lurked, shadowed and long-toothed: a small child, strange and haunted, alone in his room with only one voice left to talk to. The only one that would answer back as though he were worthy of true conversation.

And so Ren stalked the corridors, stomping old memory down with every fierce motion, senses aflame and searching. Hux’s energy, bright and burning and crimson-gold, carolled to him from low in the senior officer’s medwing. Ren had no idea what he would be doing there. He didn’t care, bursting through the door without permission or even the patience to key the pad with anything other than the Force itself.

In the centre of the small chamber a droid squeaked with a degree of alarm that couldn’t logically have been programmed, skittering back from the table. There, laid out on his stomach with only a thin sheet to preserve his modesty, the general let out a very long, very exaggerated sigh.

“Ren, I’m assuming.” He could not see him, not with his face turned down; still, heavy irritation vibrated across the thickened hot air. “Because who _else_ would storm in without a care for anyone’s desires but his own?”

Ren’s gloves creaked, hard fists testing their strength. “I need to talk to you.”

Hux hadn’t moved so much as an inch, though the med droid seemed to have frozen in a fear utterly unnatural to a mechanised creation. “I am quite obviously otherwise engaged.” And he rolled his shoulders, just a little; Ren felt his attention drawn to the faint ripple of lean muscle beneath the pale skin. “You will have to make an appointment, like everybody else. Restart that droid and leave. And if you’ve broken it, I will break _you_.”

He felt rather than saw Hux’s eyes close, but the utter disdain radiated from him with perfect ease. Ren couldn’t breathe. He’d discarded the helmet before he even realised he’d released the locking mechanism. “You couldn’t break me.”

His first reply was a sharp snort; from the disgust in it, he’d recognised the fact Ren had removed his mask. “I can assure you, Ren, that I’d damn well try.”

Something in him demanded that he _make_ Hux try. And he could only silence the thought by dragging his gaze from the long white sweep of the general’s naked back, fixing blank eyes upon the quivering droid. “It can’t be very good.”

At first Hux, even given his usual quick reflexes, appeared not to realise what Ren had been talking about. Then he shifted upon the table; from the tone of his voice, Ren could picture the way his eyes must have rolled. “I find it sufficient to purpose.”

“It’s a _droid_.” The twisting sensation low in his abdomen writhed, drove the next words from his mouth, ill-considered as he knew them to be. “Surely a sentient creature would be better at this sort of thing.”

“That’s hardly your concern.”

“Oh, but it is.” A smile had cracked the strange stillness of his features and he didn’t know why. “I need to talk to you,” he said, and if not for his gloves surely his fingernails would have broken skin. “It would be easier, were you in a more… _agreeable_ mood.”

How Hux managed such a heavy exaggeration of a sigh given his face remained unseen, Ren would never understand. “That would involve the complete absence of your presence, so I don’t believe you are going to get very far.”

The gloves fluttered to the floor as Ren stepped forward. He could move near-silently when the urge struck; even so, he saw clear the tensing in Hux’s body. One could hardly fault him such, given he lay prone and mostly unclothed before the Master of the Knights of Ren. Still Hux held his position. The man was no coward – or, at the very least, he possessed an obscene amount of pride.

Ren suspected it was likely to be some combination of the two. He had no idea why that appealed quite as much as it did. Whatever the reason, his hands came to rest upon Hux’s slickened skin, palms pressed flat, fingers opened wide.

When Hux spoke again, he did so in a manner near-conversational – as if they were taking a meal together. But at a dinner table, Hux would have his hand wrapped around a knife. The faint hum of the air around him suggested he very much wished he had one right now. “What are you doing?” he asked, and Ren only shrugged.

“The droid is useless.”

“And _you_ would be so much better?”

“You forget, I am trained in several forms of combat. From early childhood.” He did not say so with pride; even Ren himself could accept that some things would have always happened in his life, whether he’d been a Force prodigy or not. “Simple massage was something I learned quick, given there was no other cure permitted for sore and overstrained muscles.”

For the first time in their awkward conversation, Ren heard genuine curiosity in Hux’s voice. “You can’t have done it to yourself.”

“Not usually, no.”

The silence that followed hung awkward between them, like a badly-aligned portrait. A moment later, Hux drew in a deep breath, released it on something close to sound. Hux always did prefer the last word. But he did not bother with it now, as Ren’s hands moved over him in easy sweeping motion. He had such curious skin: very white, and very smooth. It bore only the faintest dusting of hair so pale as to be near-colourless; the sprinkle of freckles over his shoulders scarcely showed in the dimmed lighting of the med pod.

Even though the man habitually glided about both ship and base in full uniform with the greatcoat fluttering about his calves, Ren had figured him for a slight build. Guessing as much felt very different to _knowing_ it, and in such intimate fashion. Everything of him was built deceptively fragile, from the soft skin to the delicate lines of bone and lean muscle. Ren’s hands glided up, then down; in their path they released pockets of pressure and tension. Hux sighed, his relaxation a calculated thing. He might feel now shapeless beneath Ren’s hand: something that could be moulded, changed, made over.

_He would never permit it_.

Ren kept working, wordless in his concentration.

_And you like him the way he is, anyway._

“Turn over.”

Despite the odd hoarseness of the word, Hux still wielded it with sharp query. “What?”

“Your neck muscles are very tense.” Even as Ren said so, the general’s jaw tightened; he could all but hear the grind of teeth on bone. “I can deal with them better if you turn over.”

Hux remained very still. And then with a sigh, one very long and put upon, his body tensed as if for significant movement. Ren stood back, just enough to let him shift beneath the half-sheet. Immediately he bit back on a suspicion, now confirmed; the general lay completely nude beneath the thin covering.

Ren said nothing of it. Instead his hands moved over Hux’s throat. With thumbs against his jaw, fingertips pressed hard to the twinned arteries snaking up the tensed line of his long neck, he focused only upon the sheer _power_ of such position. Hux, General of the First Order, Commander of Starkiller Base: helpless beneath his hands, the fragile thread of his life and death held between his own teeth. How easy it would be, to press a _little_ harder. To turn a _little_ to the left, or right.

“Ren.”

The blue-green eyes held no fear. They were as light and warning as his steady voice. With a faint smile, edged and sharp, Ren opened his hands, dragged them down, then circled them up once more. Ren could see Hux stiffen at the pressure over his throat. Though he did not release the pressure as he pulled down again. Those watchful eyes fluttered shut. And yet, for all Hux appeared to be calming beneath his touch, Ren could feel his penetrating gaze still.

They were very pale eyelids, Ren thought, fingers working in in a rippling rhythm. Almost translucent, the delicate tracery of blue veinwork like lace just beneath the surface. The pale gold of surprisingly long lashes matched the faintest hint of freckles on his cheekbones. For his stillness, he could have been sleeping – but the movement of his eyes belied the truth, a dreamer yet awake.

So fascinated was Ren by the study of the general’s face that his arousal came as something of a surprise. The faintest, most fleeting thread of it curled through his thoughts; a careless glance downward, and Ren could not look away. It should have meant nothing: a mere bodily reaction, and from a man who meant so little yet.

And yet it changed everything. So easily Ren pressed down on his throat, just enough to have Hux tensing, hands rising even as Ren’s other hand drifted down the length of his body, slipping beneath the sheet. Slick and light, he wrapped callused fingers around the heat of his cock.

And he laughed, low, when Hux’s fingers curled around his hand, trying to pull it away from his throat.

“Shhh, General.” The lower hand shifted, twisted, tightened. “The idea is to _relax_.”

“Take your hand off me.”

Ren pressed a little harder still. Hux’s eyes opened, pupils dilated and demanding: rage, and something else entirely.

“Ren,” he hissed, and then cursed as the hand about his cock began a slow and lazy pump.

“Hux,” Ren returned, and did not stop. “You want this.”

His skin had started to purple; more from rage, Ren considered, than actual oxygen deprivation. After all, he was still allowing the fool man to talk. “Don’t you pull your Jedi tricks on me,” Hux spat, and Ren outright laughed.

“Oh, the Jedi certainly didn’t do _this_.” It was almost too easy, to work his hand up and down with a faint scrape of nails; Hux shuddered in his hands, the man’s fingers now in impotent fists pressed up against Ren’s grasp on his throat. And Ren tilted his head, his own burgeoning arousal tight in his trousers. “No, really. General. You need to relax.”

This was the kind of devastating emotion the Sith had used to destroy worlds. “I _hate_ you.”

“That’s fine.” His tongue dipped out, wet dry lips. “If it makes this easier.”

With thumb on one pulse, fingers tickling against the other, Ren forced the web of his hand up against the soft vulnerable tissues just beneath Hux’s jaw. For his part, the general could not offer any complaint, despite the fury of the wet eyes boring into Ren’s own. He could barely breathe, hands curled to fists now at his trembling sides.

Ren found it easy enough to let a little tendril of himself slip inside the other man’s minds. The jumble of his conscious thoughts he passed by, ignored; Ren dove deeper, lower, to the constant whispers that spoke of Hux’s bodily functioning. Already, oxygen had begun to run low. But there was enough, yet. Just _enough_.

The length of him had an odd familiarity in Ren’s hand, though it had precious little in common with his own. But it was hot and heavy and long; they may have been very different people in many other ways, but Ren thumbed the tip, worked the slit in ways that would have brought himself pleasure. Hux, gasping proved the theory that there was enjoyment in this – but whether from arousal or asphyxiation, it was impossible to tell.

Ren fisted his hand at the root, twisting. Hux’s entire body rose in spasm. With a lazy grin Ren held him there, just a moment, hand pressed hard enough to his throat to cut off his air supply entirely. When he let go, Hux spluttered; his face flushed very red, breath drawn in heavy gulping demand, eyes open and staring and furious.

In languid answer, Ren gave only another loose pump. “Is it good, General?”

Anger rose with hurricane force. Ren found it easy enough to slip inside the broken chaos of his mind, to gentle him over the edge with pressure applied to _just_ the right place. Hux’s head slammed back, his hips thrust up, the throb of his release hot and welcome between Ren’s fingers.

Only as the spasms settled, the entire lean body going slack and satiated, did Ren move back. Taking his place against the wall, silent as a shadow painted there, Ren watched the general slowly return to himself.

The procedure was wordless, intensely private; without his ability with the Force, Ren would have known nothing of how Hux currently reconstructed his conscious thoughts. As it was, he allowed himself no more than a casual caress of his mind, and then withdrew. Hux continued to centre himself as if Ren were no longer present at all. He found that more interesting than expected; Ren would not have credited the man with any experience of this depth of meditative thought.

And, just as sudden as his orgasm, Hux sat up, face set in its usual stoic mask, eyes very cold.

“Is _this_ what you wanted from me, then?”

The clear irritation could not be ignored. Yet beneath it Ren sensed yet that boneless satiation of earlier, now overlaid with an almost predatory curiosity. Ren only shrugged. He knew the man would not let it go so easy.

“You are in a much better mood now, at least,” he said, careless and negligent; Hux’s growing frustration felt to him a balm against the pressing heat between his own legs, unreleased and heavy.

“Oh, and what about you?” His lips twisted, something trapped between a scowl and a smirk. “Take off your clothes.”

A freezing crash of sudden sensation turned too rapidly into a flushing welcome heat. “What?”

It had definitely become a smirk, though one now consisting primarily of bared teeth. “Turnabout is fair play, I’d say.”

“I didn’t realise _fair play_ was a chief consideration of yours.”

The long legs, slender and lightly downed in golden hair, swung about the bed; Hux took the floor with easy grace, crossing to loom before Ren despite his nakedness, and the two or three inches Ren had over him. But then one hand snaked forward, cupped knowing over his crotch. “It isn’t,” Hux said easily, and leaned forward; the next words he breathed against Ren’s lips, his fingers tightened enough to hurt. “Your clothes. _Remove them_.”

Ren had never enjoyed orders. Yet the moment after Hux had stepped away, his hands were on his own belt, working it free. Now leaning against the wall, the general remained both motionless, and utterly naked. But with arms crossed, one eyebrow arched, the relaxed lines of his body rendering him a construct of pure elegance: the man could be said to be clothed in his dignity alone.

When all had been discarded, Ren found himself without any semblance of thought. Despite the warmth of the chamber, his skin prickled with gooseflesh before the general’s coolly assessing gaze; his bare hands fisted at his side, stomach a mass of knotted fire. When he attempted to swallow, he found his throat had gone very dry; the words rasped from between numb lips. “Where do you want me?”

One eyebrow quirked high. “Ah, very good.” And his hand extended, fingers tracing upon warm air. “The table, if you would.”

He could not seem to remember any movement between standing before the general, and lying down on the hard table. The lingering warmth of Hux’s now absent body curled about him, almost welcoming; the rasp of the towelling against his hardening cock seemed an invitation. A sigh escaped him, as well as a small thrusting movement of hips.

The slap landed accurate and quick against his ass. “Keep still.”

It startled Ren enough to make him obey. And then, before he could do otherwise, Hux’s opened hand gentled over the sting. Gathering his low lip between his teeth, biting hard, Ren could picture his expression all too easily; thoughtful and knowing both, the one Hux wore when analysing information upon his datapad and considering what use it might be to him.

Ren did not fight it. In this, he lay at the centre of the general’s not inconsiderable focus, sole receiver of Hux’s attention. It was a rare occurrence, even given all the trouble he caused the man on a regular basis. And so he kept very still, and very quiet, and felt his skin burn as it waited for the other man’s too-casual touch.

“You know, I have very little experience in this,” Hux observed – quiet, and utterly without shame. “I believe I’ll just do whatever _I_ think best.”

He was not seeking anything close to permission; the sentence had scarcely left his lips when Hux opened his hands over the plains of Ren’s long back, slick with oil. The warmth of them had Ren shivering, perfect contradiction; Hux snorted, but did not slow his movements. Instead he continued about his painstaking exploration. Up and down, he mapped the contours of his body; fingertips lingered over the small moles and freckles like a cartographer about his work.

He had no experience, Hux had said. But he had, as the receiver. And Ren, for all he had degraded the man before Snoke, and with pleasure, couldn’t deny the man was a quick study. Hux worked his muscles in long sweeps, starting from low on his spine and circling upward. Knowing fingers curled sure around his ribcage, thumbs digging into the hollow of his spine.

And then: down, again. The drag slowed over the swell of his ass. Something in that felt almost gentle. Yet Hux maintained enough pressure in the movement that Ren could not call it hesitant, unsure. Hux would never be a creature prone to indecision.

It would be such a simple thing to reach out, to know for sure what thoughts moved through that moral desert of a mind. But Ren did not. The simple appeal, the easy _pleasure_ of lying here, beneath another’s hands: he could not deny any of those things. Hux held him prisoner under his touch, perhaps – but then, Ren himself held the damnable man’s attention hostage, and he had no intention of a peaceful resolution to such standoff.

One long finger, slick with oil, slipped into the crease of his ass. With a sharp gasp Ren dug fingers into the sheet, back arching. A warning hand, palm pressed to one cheek, first held him still; a moment later, it pressed him back into submission, burning cheek pressed against the table.

“If you don’t behave,” Hux warned, sweet as the burn of dripping hot honey, “I’ll stop.”

Ren closed his eyes, drew a breath; he thoughts only grew dizzier, less anchored. “You wouldn’t.”

Two fingers traced a lazy mark of infinity in the small of his shivering back. “Wouldn’t I?”

“No.” And Hux had barely taken two challenging steps from the table when Ren said, sharp and shaking: “Come _back_.”

He hadn’t used the Force to compel his cooperation. And yet Hux had moved back almost too quick; the words dropped right beside his ear, warm and warning. “If you don’t do as I say,” he said with heartbreaking simplicity, “I’ll work you to the point of coming and then leave you satisfied with nothing but your own limp hand.”

Ren tried to swallow down a shiver, found it escaped on a moan instead; his erection dug into his stomach, dripping and desperate. “And what if that’s enough for me?”

“It won’t be.” His laughter burned, invited pure inferno. “And it never will be ever again.”

Of course Hux left him with no chance to reply; the hand cupping his ass shifted with slick purpose, the middle finger slipping inside him with an ease that appeared to surprise even Hux. But then he kept moving, thumb curved down to work over the perineum, the other hand tracing languid circles at the base of his neck.

“Have you done this before?” he asked, faintly curious; Ren turned his face down, eyes clenched very tight.

“How is that your business?”

The finger crooked, the tip dragging; even as Ren hissed, hips shifting, Hux gave a low chuckle. “Perhaps I would go easier on a virgin.”

“I don’t need your pity or your kindness.”

“But you _want_ them.” And he sighed, though it turned into an outright laugh before it could finish. “Then again, if you won’t allow yourself such things, who am I to argue?”

Turning his head, Ren didn’t bother to hide the acid bite of his own words. “I thought arguing was your particular speciality.”

“Oh, no. It’s yours.” And his body, long and naked yet, hovered over his, chest warm against his slick back. “I don’t start arguments I haven’t already won, Ren.” And as the whisper ended, Hux closed teeth over his earlobe, pulled gently, just far enough to hurt. The weight of him pressed harder yet as another finger slid inside with the downstroke. Ren tensed, drew a low shaking breath. In answer Hux only chuckled, low and dangerously warm as his twisted his wrist, drove his fingers deeper yet.

Ren had never before been breached. In fact, he had barely allowed any contact, platonic or otherwise. The only opportunity he’d had for sexual exploration had been with the other youths at the Jedi school, and in that they had all been little more than fumbling children, shamed by the knowledge that Master Luke had told them to turn away from such desires.

Hux had climbed upon the table completely now, though he’d braced his weight on knees and his left arm; the other hand had wrapped about his cock, the head pressing with clear purpose between the slick crease of Ren’s ass. Teeth broke his lip, but it did not move in.

“Press back.”

Around the iron and salt tang of his own blood, Ren grunted. “What?”

“Push back, against me. It’ll make it easier.”

The strange curl of gratitude was utterly unnecessary. Ren felt it anyway, even though the motion didn’t lessen the pain, exactly. Still, it did seem to ease the way for Hux. In short, stuttering moments, he pressed his entire length inside. Only then did he allow his weight to lie upon him, breath shallow and quick. Lips pressed warm against the nape of his neck, hips moving in a strange shallow movement not unlike the rabbit-quick beat of his heart.

“Ah,” Hux murmured, muffled by skin and sweat. “So you _haven’t_ done this before.”

Ren offered up only another grunt, mind torn and flailing. The sensation of fullness was alien, bordering on uncomfortable; it was hard to imagine where genuine pleasure could result from this. And yet, growing instinct suggested he ought to push back, incite Hux onward, dragging from him desire and destruction both.

The kiss, pressed to the nape of his neck, felt surprisingly tender. “It’s all right,” Hux whispered. “You’ll do exactly as I say, if you want to know how good this can feel.”

He shifted then, but only a little; it still sent a cascade of sensation skipping along Ren’s spine, nerves setting themselves afire with the nearness of him. With it came the dizzying yearning to open his mind, to delve into Hux’s own: to feel from the inside the madness of what the general did to a man who had just proved moments earlier that he could have crushed him with scarcely a thought.

Yet Ren remained in his own body. Trapped in a broken symphony of conflicting thought and sensation, he found remaining there to be both delicious and undeniable. Perhaps that had been why Luke had forbidden it; in this Ren could feel the Force as fire at his fingertips, a tempered blaze just waiting to be fanned to brutal inferno.

“You’re very quiet,” Hux noted, sudden, his own words scarcely more than a moist murmur against his ear. “Perhaps I’d have stuck my dick in you right from the beginning, if I’d known then it was the best way to shut you up.”

A choked gasp barely escaped his constricted throat; such words were not something he could have imagined before, spoken now in the general’s low cultured accent. His answering chuckle, vibrating and hot, suggested Hux knew the power of them.

_Of course he does. He’s a master of oratory – whether he’s inciting mass violence and war, or just laying siege upon the senses of a dubious ally forced into his orbit._

“I suppose it makes sense.” His tone had turned wondering, musing; Ren had heard it only once or twice before, when Hux had speculated about how Starkiller would look upon first firing. “But then…Ren. You are all volatile undirected energy. Snoke simply doesn’t give you enough to do.” His hips shifted, cock moving in _just_ the right drag. “I could give you things to do.”

Any words Ren might have said were all but driven out on a sudden brutal thrust. Gasping, knuckles white, mind bright and empty. And Hux was shaking his head, loosened hair a whisper against the slick skin of his tensed shoulders.

“I should bend you over one of those consoles you’ve broken,” he said, thoughtful and sharp. “Let you feel the heat and the broken edges and broken current as I fuck you harder.” And he almost sounded like he was genuinely interested in Ren’s answer, as if he would not just satisfy only himself, when he added, “Would you like that?”

Assent escaped before he could even think its shape. “ _Yes_.”

“Of course you would.” A gentling hand tangled in his sweat-damp hair. “You’re not much one for orders, I know that.” And he gripped tight, pulled back hard; the line of his throat was a broken curve as Hux hissed, “But you haven’t really tried _my_ orders, have you?”

The awkward angle permitted no more than unintelligible babble. Hux was laughing, again, pushing his head back down, nails digging into the soft skin at the nape where his hairline began.

“I do know better.” The sharp edges of his teeth teased at the place where jaw turned to throat, the pulse there hard and hurting. The smile stretched about said teeth burned his skin as he added, almost soft, “ _Don’t I_?”

“Just shut up and _fuck_ , Hux.”

He answered with a sharper thrust, deep enough to actually send a sharp curl of pain low through his hips. The alarming creak of the bed meant nothing to his roiling mind until he felt the accompanying list to the side; Ren caught it before the legs could buckle completely, bolstering the breaking thing with his mind even as his fingers curled tight enough to tear the sheet above. Hux paused not at all; braced on his upper arms, hips working, he curled one arm about Ren’s forehead, hair caught and tangled in clenched fingers. With his heaving chest pressed to his back like matched puzzle pieces, he then pressed lips over the knob of his spine, the sensation burning with all the permanency of a fresh brand.

It would hurt, later. It hurt now. Ren had long ago decided it didn’t matter. Their breaths fell into matched rhythm, Ren unable to focus on little besides the drag of Hux’s cockhead over that place he’d found himself, once or twice, with his own long fingers. No accompanying hand moved on his cock, pressed between the towel and his own hard abdomen. That gave him only the slightest friction, friction that could never be enough. And yet, it felt natural to take it from Hux’s mind instead: stealing the sensation of Hux’s cock delving into heat and warmth, tightly held by the rich dizzying pressure of the crucible that was Kylo Ren’s own body.

A low growl, rising from low in his breathless bruised throat, heralded Hux’s release; he came hard, perfect rhythm dissolving into erratic thrust and circle. Teeth closed over one shoulder, deep enough to bruise, to bleed. Even stuttering to a halt, Hux’s cock still caught over his prostate; that, and the link to Hux’s own white-out pleasure, made it oh so easy to follow him over into bliss.

The table collapsed.

Hux hadn’t been hurt. He couldn’t have been; his entire weight had been cushioned by Ren beneath him. Still, the indignant words were those of someone who intended to litigate for every one of their non-existent injuries. “What the karking hell was _that_?”

Ren, for his own part, spent most days collecting new bruises across the recycled canvas of his skin. Shifting silently, noting nothing particularly interesting aside from an interesting twitch in his neck, he raised his hands, let them fall. “We broke it. Earlier.” Hux’s glare burned into the back of his mind; Ren rolled his eyes. “And so I was…I was holding it up. And then…my concentration broke.”

The silence didn’t promise anything healthy. And then Hux, still sprawled atop him in the ruins of the bed, started shaking. A long moment passed before the truth struck Ren harder than the minor fall: Hux was _laughing_. And then Ren hissed as Hux rolled away, pulling out and regaining his feet in one fluid motion. Wincing at the tenderness in his rear, Ren rolled to his side, found with a twinge of genuine disappointment that Hux’s expression had returned to its usual cool indifference.

“I…”’

And Hux had already turned away, reaching for a robe. “My _life_ ,” he muttered, shaking his head; when he turned back, the robe tightly belted and as set on his shoulders as a uniform, he smoothed his hair back with little more than sweat. The lips, so recently pressed to sweat-sweetened skin, had curled back into his habitual sneer.

Yet not even General Hux could mask from Kylo Ren the faint humming aura of recent satisfaction. The fact it so clearly mirrored his own had Ren smiling, even as Hux scowled deeper. “So. What _was_ it, that you wanted to discuss so urgently with me?”

Not even the cruellest and most creative of Snoke’s techniques could have drawn the truth from him: Ren had entirely forgotten. “It can wait,” he said, oddly even – but then, he’d learned to lie with an almost professional ease at a very young age. Even children could have deep, dark secrets. Yet the crooked smile he wore now was far more honest than any he’d worn in years. “I’ll come see you later. When we have more time.”

Something bright flared in the cool blue-green of his watchful eyes. “Well,” Hux drawled, and then he crossed the space between them one last time: crouching down, he drew so close that though he barely whispered, Ren could hear nothing else. “You’d better come back prepared, then. _This_ is just yet another piece of broken equipment you owe me for.”

Still sprawled in the cradle of the broken bed, Ren let his brow furrow to deep line, even as his smile grew only more lopsided. “And what do I owe you?”

Hux straightened, lips in a thin line, something terribly close to _mischief_ dancing in his bright eyes. “Why, whatever I deem appropriate.”

And with an easy military stride, even while barefoot and in only his robe, Hux was gone. Still on his back, in the ruins of the table and his own mind, Ren stared at the ceiling and still couldn’t remember why he’d been looking for the general in the first place.

And then, he just smiled wider, and closed his eyes. They’d find a reason, between them. They had to learn to work together on something.


End file.
